



UJLfu^yXAJL^ O L'V^^^-MyiJrvV UAxX/y\Ay. 



SI 



CLArXJL^ 



^■L^^ctj ^J^iiL^umJ- 





Class ^ (oi z^ 
Book W7<V2^ 

Copyright W 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr 




ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

1890. 



1 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRAT^T. 



V. 



^^^^ 



~\ 





PHIIiADELPIIIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

1890. 



•e 



un 



^ 



\^^ 



k 



1^ 



Copyright, 1890, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 




ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 



Grant, Ulysses Simpson, eighteenth president of the 
United States, was born at Point Pleasant, Clermont 
county, Ohio, April 27, 1822. He was of Scottish 
ancestry, but his family had been American in all its 
branches for eight generations. Ulysses was the eldest 
of six children born to Jesse R. Grant and his wife 
Hannah Simpson, and assisted his father on the farm 
in summer, attending the village school during the 
winter. In. the spring of 1839 ^^^ was appointed to a 
cadetship in the United States Military Academy, and 
graduated in 1843. He was commissioned brevet 
second-lieutenant, and assigned to duty at Jefferson 
Barracks, Missouri. In May 1844 he accompanied 
his regiment, the Fourth Infantry, to Louisiana, and 
in September 1845 he was commissioned second-lieu- 
tenant, and joined the army of occupation under 
General Zachary Taylor. Grant participated in the 
battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and was 
also present at the capture of Monterey. Later the 
Fourth Infantry embarked for Vera Cruz, to join the 
army of General VVinfield Scott, and Grant took part 



^g^gijjgllL 



4 ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 

in all the battles of Scott's successful campaign and 
in the final capture of the city of Mexico. In the 
summer of 1848 his regiment returned to the United 
States, when he obtained leave of absence, and in 
August of that year was married to Julia B. Dent, of 
St Louis, by whom he had three sons and a daughter, 
the eldest of whom. Colonel Frederick D. Grant, was 
in April 18S9 appointed American Minister to Austria. 
Lieutenant Grant served at various posts; was in 1853 
appointed to a captaincy; and in the following year 
resigned his commission, and settled on a farm near 
St Louis, Missouri. 

When the war began in April 1861 Grant was re- 
siding in Galena, Illinois ; he immediately offered his 
services to the government, and in June he was ap- 
pointed colonel of the 2 1st Regiment of Illinois In- 
fantry, with which he was sent to Missouri. In August 
he was advanced to brigadier-general of volunteers, 
and assigned to the command of a district, and in 
November he fought the battle of Belmont. In Feb- 
ruary 1862 he captured Fort Henry, and ten days 
later Fort Donelson, with 14,623 prisoners, for which 
victories he was made major-general of volunteers. 
In April Grant fought a two days' battle at Shiloh, 
amongst the severest of the war, in which General A. 
S. Johnston, commanding the Confederate army, was 
killed. After various unsuccessful movements against 
Vicksburg, which commenced in the November of 
1862, Grant crossed the Mississippi, April 30, 1863, 
defeated the enemy at Port Gibson and at Champion 
Hill, and drove them behind their entrenchments at 
Vicksburg, to which place he laid siege. After many 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 



5 



assaults, the stronghold surrendered unconditionally 
on July 4, 1863, with 31,600 prisoners and 172 cannon, 
and the Mississippi was opened from its source to its 
mouth. In October Grant was ordered to Chatta- 
nooga, where he fought a battle, capturing the enemy's 
entire line, and driving him out of Tennessee. In 
March 1864 Grant, having previously been made a 
major-general in the regular army for his victory at 
Vicksburg, was promoted to the grade of lieutenant- 
general, and assigned to the command of all the armies 
of the United States, with his headquarters with the 
army of the Potomac. His plan of campaign was to 
concentrate all the national forces into several distinct 
armies, which should operate simultaneously against 
the enemy, Sherman moving toward Atlanta, while 
Grant himself accompanied the army of the Potomac 
against Richmond. During the night of May 4 the 
latter crossed the Rapidan, encountered General R. E. 
Lee in the Wilderness, and fought a desperate three 
days' battle, one of the fiercest of modern times. 
Grant moved forward on the 7th, and fought again at 
Spottsylvania Courthouse on the lOth, and still again 
on the 1 2th, on which occasion he captured an entire 
division of the Confederate army. The smoke of 
battle hung over the mighty hosts for six days, while 
the North remained in a state of suspense bordering 
upon agony; but on the nth Grant wrote to Wash- 
ington, ' I propose to fight it out on this line, if it 
takes all summer.' Thus, fighting and flanking, ever 
pursuing the offensive, and daily drawing nearer to 
Richmond, he at length drove the enemy within the 
defences of that city, and there held him in a vice. 



6 ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 

while he left to his lieutenants — Sherman, Sheridan, 
and Thomas — a harvest of laurels by active move- 
ments and successful battles. On March 29, 1865, 
there began a week's hard fighting, at the close of 
which Lee surrefidered his entire army at Appomattox 
Courthouse, April 9, receiving from his victor most 
generous terms. The fall of Richmond substantially 
ended the war, and Grant returned to Washington to 
prepare his report of the operations of the armies of 
the United States from the date of his appointment to 
command the same, and to muster out nearly a million 
of troops that the country no longer required. 

In July 1866 Grant was advanced to the grade of 
full general, and in May 1868 he was nominated for 
the presidency by the Republican convention, and in 
the following November was elected. Out of the 294 
electoral votes Grant received 214, and Horatio Sey- 
mour, the Democratic candidate, 80. He was again 
elected to the presidency in November 1872, thus 
filling the office of chief-magistrate for eight years. 
Among the most important events of his administra- 
tion were the adoption in 1869 of the fifteenth amend- 
ment to the constitution, which guaranteed the right 
of suffi-age without regard to race, colour, or previous 
condition of servitude ; and the peaceful settlement of 
the ' Alabama Claims' (see Alabama). After retiring 
from the presidency. General Grant spent two years 
in foreign travel, receiving unusual attentions from 
the rulers of the various countries which he visited 
in his tour round the world. In June 1880 his name 
was again presented to a Republican convention, but, 
chiefly owing to a traditional sentiment against a third 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 7 

term of the presidency, the nomination was given to 
James A. Garfield. In 1881 Grant purchased a house 
in New York, where he afterwards passed his winters, 
while his summers were spent in his seaside cottage 
at Long Branch, New Jersey. Finding himself unable 
with his income to properly maintain his family, he 
became a partner in a banking-house in which one of 
his sons and others were interested, bearing the name 
of Grant and Ward, and invested all his available 
capital in the business, but taking no part in the 
affairs of the firm, which were left almost entirely in 
the hands of the junior partner. In May 1884 the 
house, without warning, suspended, and it was then 
discovered that two of the partners had robbed 
the general and his family of all they possessed. 
Until this time Grant had refused all solicitations 
to write the history of his military career; but now, 
finding himself bankrupt, and with the hope of pro- 
viding for his family, he began the preparation of his 
personal memoirs. The contract with his publishers 
was made February 27, 1885, and the work appeared 
about a year later. In the summer of 1884 he com- 
plained of a soreness in his throat, and an examina- 
tion detected the presence of cancer at the root of 
the tongue. The sympathies of the nation were now 
aroused, and on March 4, 1885, congress passed a 
bill creating him a general on the retired list, thus 
restoring him to his former rank in the army, which 
he had lost on accepting the presidency. It may be 
doubted if since the world began any book has been 
written under similar conditions ; the dying soldier, 
suffering constant and at times the severest agony, 



8 ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 

yet struggled on successfully, completing his literary 
labours only four days before his death at Mount 
McGregor, near Saratoga, New York, 23d July 1885. 
His remains were removed to New York, and on 
August 8 were interred with great pomp in Riverside 
Park, overlooking the Hudson. Many lives of Grant 
have been written, the most valuable of which is his 
own (2 vols. 1885-86), a work that brought his widow 
no less than ;^5oo,ooo. 



-■ ^wnoKti>S 



013 789 055 




